


Love's a child's game

by jijal



Category: BTOB (Band)
Genre: First Meetings, Kid Fic, Light-Hearted, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jijal/pseuds/jijal
Summary: The last people to board the plane are a young-but-very-tired-looking man and his little daughter, and Eunkwang misses no chance to absolutely embarrass himself from the moment they sit down in their seats next to him.
Relationships: Lee Minhyuk/Seo Eunkwang
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	Love's a child's game

Watching the last few suitcases getting heaved from the big, metal cart into the plane, Eunkwang is pulled from his thoughts as he notices someone approach from the corners of his eyes. The two seats next to him have been vacant since he sat down in the window seat, and they might be the only ones left on the entire plane. They’re two of the last people to board, a young-looking man and, at first hidden by a row of seats, a small girl following right behind him. She only lets go of his hand when they’re standing in front of Eunkwang’s row, the man gesturing for her to take the middle seat.

“You sit down over there, honey.”

Eunkwang isn’t surprised to hear him speak in Korean, although he couldn’t be sure where he’s from before. The man sounds tired, but like he’s doing his best not to let it show, and Eunkwang can’t help but feel for him. He can only imagine what it must be like to travel with a child; for all the memorable, fun moments there must be equally as much hardship, especially without anybody else there to help.

Their eyes meet for a second, Eunkwang shooting the man a quick, awkward smile that he weakly returns before he sits down, dropping his bag to the floor and directing his attention to the little girl again.

“Three hours, okay? Can you sit still for three hours?” he asks softly, as he fastens his daughter’s seatbelt. “And make sure not to bother the gentleman next to you, alright?”

Eunkwang half-heartedly bites back a chuckle. “That’s okay, really.”

The man scoffs, working his own seatbelt.

“You don’t want to know how she can get when she's bored,” he mutters, looking up at Eunkwang, and, directed at his daughter next to him, “Isn’t that, right?”

The girl just giggles, clasping her hands together over her mouth, and the man breaks out into a tired smile himself. He takes out a colouring book and a plush toy from the bag standing by his feet and hands them to her one by one, and Eunkwang just watches them for a moment. Flying to Tokyo all on his own with no time to do anything but work, sleep, and get ready to go to the airport again was stressful enough, but spending the entirety of yesterday in various auditoriums, speaking with and listening to people in formal attire with no room to breathe except for the lunch buffet, was draining, to say the least. Eunkwang missed home, missed work as soon as he’d left, and there is something oddly comforting about a conversation as mundane, but loving as the one between the man and his daughter.

“You need anything else?” he asks, brushing her hair with his hand.

“No,” she declares happily, vehemently shaking her head, as she hugs the plush toy tightly to her chest, squeezing the life out of it.

“But we need to be quiet, honey,” the man is quick to remind her. “Do you remember what I told you last time?”

“People—people on the plane want to rest,” she repeats back to him what he must’ve said to her on their last flight.

“That’s right,” he says, lowering his voice to a whisper. “And we need to be polite and think of others, okay?”

“Okay,” she says back, adjusting her voice to his. His lips quirk up in a satisfied smile and he presses a quick kiss to the top of her head.

“Good. Will you draw by yourself for a bit? While I take a nap?”

She nods, and the man pulls his phone out of the pocket of his jeans, probably switching it to airplane mode, if Eunkwang had to guess. He stores it in his bag, shoves it under the seat in front of him and lets out a deep sigh.

“Would it be a problem if I rested my eyes for a few minutes?” he asks, directed at Eunkwang, and Eunkwang only notices how bloodshot his eyes are now that he gets a chance to look at him from much closer, holding his gaze.

“No, not at all. You look very tired.”

He regrets the words as soon they’re out, internally panicking that he might’ve said too much, gone too far already, but the man leaves him no time to apologise.

“If she's making any trouble, please let me know,” he says, either not bothered by Eunkwang’s comment or willing to look past it, and Eunkwang decides to let it go, as well.

"Of course. No worries."

The man sinks back into the seat, closes his eyes and, by the looks of it, is knocked out not even two minutes later. Take-off has Eunkwang snap out of his thoughts, and he realises he’s been staring at the man for way too long already. Before anyone can notice, he directs his attention to the world outside his window, watches as the city becomes smaller and smaller with the steadily increasing altitude and mentally says his goodbyes. Even though he was only there for work, there is something nostalgic about leaving, there always is; and Eunkwang takes a moment and lets himself give into that feeling.

When he can’t make out anything anymore, the ground below only distinguishable into land or water, he sits back, his gaze only briefly on the screen built into the back of the seat in front of him before it falls onto the man’s daughter, quietly sitting between them and dangling her feet off the edge of the seat. She’s opened the colouring book that’s resting in her lap, flipping through pages of messily coloured in animals, houses and some creatures Eunkwang can’t quite identify anymore. Some of the pages are filled with her own drawings, too; flowers, hearts, suns filling the blank space around the motives that she coloured in.

He wonders if she had coloured her away all the way to the end of the book and started adding to it when there was nothing more to do, but she flips one last page and gets to where she must’ve left off: two cows standing on a big stretch of grass and still begging to be drowned in colour. The girl regards the page for a moment, silently looks up at the man and down to the floor in front of him. Finally, she turns around and looks at Eunkwang.

“You need coloured pencils, don’t you?” he asks, keeping his voice down.

The girl nods and points at the bag on the floor. “Appa put them in the bag.”

Eunkwang hesitates, opens his mouth and closes it again. He can’t simply go through a stranger’s belongings, especially now that he’s been trusted with his daughter while he gets some much needed rest.

“I, I’m not sure—,” he starts, but stops himself. He doesn’t have the heart to say no. “I’ll get them for you, okay?”

He makes sure the seat belt sign above him is switched off and undoes his seat belt, sliding off his seat down to kneel on the floor as quietly as possible. On all fours, he crawls forward and reaches over to where the bag is half-heartedly shoved under the seat in front of the man. He manages to grab it merely by a corner and as he ever so slowly pulls it towards him, he prays to God that no one walk past and see him like this. He isn’t sure anyone would believe his explanation as to why he’s doing what he’s doing, or if they’d be understanding enough to turn a blind eye even if they did.

The bag brushes against the man’s legs, Eunkwang too concentrated to see it coming, and he whips his head around to risk a glance up at him. Either it was light enough not to wake him up, or he’s so tired not even a plane crash could; the man is still fast asleep and oblivious to what’s happening around him.

Walking a line between hasty and cautious, Eunkwang unzips the bag, and he tries his absolute best not to look at anything else in particular, because this might be the most invasive thing he’s ever done, cramming through someone else’s possessions without their permission. He tells himself it’s for the greater good, and the man would understand if he knew what he was doing, but it feels wrong no matter how much Eunkwang tries to convince himself he isn’t a bad person for doing this.

He bites back a relieved sigh when he finds the yellow pencil case amidst the chaos.

“Here you go,” he whispers, handing it to the girl and returning the bag to its original spot in front of the man’s feet as best as he can. It’s not perfect, but Eunkwang can’t bring up the nerves to shove it past him, and risk waking him up again. The poor man deserves all the sleep he can get.

Finally back in his seat, Eunkwang lets out a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second, waiting for the adrenaline rush to subside again. He doesn’t fly all that often, but the most that was ever asked of him was to get up and let someone else squeeze past him to get to the restrooms. The flight information on the screen in front of him tells him they’re only halfway across mainland Japan, but he already knows he won’t be forgetting about the man or his daughter for a long, long while.

The girl places the plush toy between herself and Eunkwang to make space on her lap, but the pencil case is still in the way. She tucks it between her elbows and her body, and starts colouring in one of the cows with the colouring book on her lap, and Eunkwang decides he can’t just sit and watch her.

“Here,” he says, still speaking as quietly as possible, the entire plan dead silent apart from the usual noise of the overhead AC. He puts the small table down in front of her and pats it lightly. “You can put it down here.”

The girl does as told, moving everything onto the reclining table and scooting forward in her seat a little.

“Do you like drawing?” she asks, attentively eyeing Eunkwang’s face.

“Of course,” he says. “It’s really fun, isn’t it?

He chuckles lightly, and the girl nods, a wide grin adorning her face. She fishes a blue pencil out of the pencil case and holds it out for him.

“You can draw something!” she says, obviously excited, but still doing her best not to be too loud.

“Are you sure?” Eunkwang asks, hesitantly taking the blue pencil from her.

She just nods like it’s the most natural thing to do, asking a stranger to draw with her, nudges the colouring book in Eunkwang’s direction, and Eunkwang swears his heart is about to burst out of his chest.

“Appa did… this one,” she says, going back a page and pointing at a little bird coloured in blue, red and yellow, sitting on the branch of a tree. Proudly showing off her father’s drawing rather than her own, she looks up at Eunkwang again, waiting for his reaction.

“Oh, he’s really good,” he says, genuinely impressed. The even strokes and lines, the choice of colours — it’s honestly better than anything he could ever come up with. Eunkwang wishes he was talented like that.

“You can draw…” she hums in her throat, turning over the page again and scanning it for a moment, until her finger lands on an empty spot. “Here.”

“Okay,” Eunkwang mumbles, leaning forward, but he notices he’s nervous — _worried_ , he’ll mess up and draw something she won’t be happy with. “What should I draw?”

“A bird please!”

“Okay."

Lowering the blue pencil to the page, Eunkwang tries to conjure the mental image of a bird, or even just the man’s drawing to figure out where to start; he wasn’t lying when he told the girl he liked drawing, it’s a nice, calming activity and he’d love to do it more often if he just had the time. But his skills aren’t nowhere near good enough to draw animals, let alone recognisable ones.

He draws one squiggly line after the other, and the circles that make up the bird’s head and body end up being almost the same size, while its legs aren’t the same length.

That’s perspective, Eunkwang thinks. If he looks at it the right way—

"Anything to drink, sir?”

The stewardess’ friendly voice has Eunkwang’s head snap up — he didn’t even hear her approach. It takes him a second to catch on and compute the question, and another to reply.

“Just water, please.”

He puts down his table while the stewardess fills up a plastic cup, and takes it with the hint of a bow.

"For your daughter?”

Eunkwang’s eyes go wide in surprise.

"Uhm, she— I’m not—,” he stammers — only to be cut off by the girl.

“Juice, please!" she says, having the stewardess look back at Eunkwang for his answer. Shoving his internal panic aside, he presses his eyes shut and just gives a small nod, silently asking the man for forgiveness yet another time.

The girl already gulping down her cup of orange juice, the stewardess briefly glances at the man, and then back at Eunkwang.

"Anything for your husband when he wakes up, maybe?”

“I think he's okay,” Eunkwang says, weakly. “Thank you.”

He gives a small, forced smile, his cheeks warm and his ears about to catch on fire, and the stewardess moves on to the next row of seats, leaving Eunkwang to digest the conversation and, more importantly, the fact that the stewardess now thinks he’s married to the man sitting in the aisle seat. It’s a fair assumption to make, Eunkwang could never hold it against her, and he thinks as long as the man doesn’t find out, he’ll be fine.

He risks a side glance at him, and sighs.

He's cute. Painfully so. But Eunkwang knows better than to hope for the unlikely. He has a child, is probably happily married and on his way back home to his wife. The odds of him feeling any particular way about Eunkwang other than _indifferent_ are comically slim, and Eunkwang feels silly for even wasting time thinking about it. He rolls his eyes at himself, shakes his head and tells himself to get it together.

The man suddenly stirs in his sleep and cracks his eyes open, and for a moment Eunkwang is scared he said any of his thoughts out loud without realising. A small groan slips past the man’s lips, and he rubs over his face a few times before he turns to his daughter. Confusion ghosts over his face.

"You didn't order that by yourself, did you…?" he asks, his voice low and raspy from sleep, eyeing the now empty cup standing next to the colouring book. He looks almost disoriented as he sits up straight, like he’s having trouble remembering where he even is.

“She did,” Eunkwang says, giving an apologetic smile, the man shooting him a look as if he forgot Eunkwang was still here. “The stewardess came by, and asked if she wanted anything, and she answered before I could. I hope it's okay I didn't say no."

"Oh, no, don't worry,” the man mumbles. "That's fine.”

He yawns quietly, stretching his arms as much as the small space allows and slowly comes back to the world of the awake. He leans against the backrest again, his head rolling to the side and his eyes landing on the blue pencil that Eunkwang put down on his table when he got his water.

“Were you drawing with her?” he asks, perking up his eyebrows ever so slightly.

“Yeah, she asked me to, and I… yeah,” Eunkwang weakly trails off. “Thought I’d give it a try.”

The man chuckles quietly. “That’s nice of you.”

“Appa, look!” the girl says, patting her father’s arm to get his attention. She lifts up the colouring book to show him her progress, and he makes an impressed face. Eunkwang has to bite back a smile at the sight.

“That looks great, honey,” the man says. “You want me to help you?”

“Yes!”

She quickly fishes a green pencil out of the case and hands it to he man, and Eunkwang decides to focus on something else, now that the man is awake. His voice still ringing in his ears, Eunkwang gets his laptop out of his bag and puts it down on the table, the cup of water carefully tucked between his knees. His report isn’t due until Tuesday, but he might as well get it done while he has little else to do, his only choices being work or making conversation with the stranger sitting in the aisle seat. Not only does he seem endearingly concentrated on the task at hand, filling in the grass at the bottom of the page and mumbling the odd, supportive _good_ , and _that looks nice_ to his daughter every now and again, but Eunkwang is also scared to push past any boundaries. They are strangers to him, after all. No matter how easily the man — or his daughter — manages to make him feel like they aren’t.

He sighs softly, pulls up his notes from yesterday and starts writing about the conference, the different presentations he listened to and every piece of information he thought useful and wrote down on his phone in between. But no matter how hard he tries to stay focused, he’s slower than usual, and by the time the stewardess stops by to collect the trash, he’s only halfway through his notes.

He quickly drinks up his water and hands her the cup, and she disposes of it at the bottom of her cart.

“A lovely girl,” she says, her eyes flickering from the man to Eunkwang, and back again, shooting both of them a warm smile, and Eunkwang’s mouth falls open, dumbfounded. In the time it takes his brain to catch up, the man simply says _thank you_ , and smiles politely back at the stewardess, and Eunkwang is left to wonder why he wouldn’t want to correct her.

Still trying to figure out what to make of the exchange, or what to say, Eunkwang only realises he’s been staring at absolutely _nothing_ in shock when he hears the snicker coming from the aisle seat. He regains control over his face, remembers to at least feign composure and play off how flustered he really is. Helplessly, he shifts in his seat, the sudden wave of heat coming over him not any easier to deal with with the man’s amused smirk burned into his brain.

“Do you have children, too?” the man asks, kindly ignoring Eunkwang’s reaction.

“Me—? No, no,” Eunkwang manages, clearing his throat. “I’d love to someday, though.”

The man nods. “I see.”

“Your wife…? Is she…?” Eunkwang asks, swallowing the rest of the sentence.

“Divorced. For a little over a year now.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry to hear that.” Eunkwang averts his eyes, regret washing over him. He silently curses at himself for even asking, and making the man talk about something so private. “I shouldn’t have asked. I apologise.”

He lowers his head, feeling nothing short of the worst person possible.

“It’s okay, you couldn’t have known,” the man says. He can’t be much older than Eunkwang, if he is, at all. Yet he’s been through so much.

“We both knew it was coming. It’s better this way,” he adds, as if he wants to give some kind of comfort to Eunkwang — out of all people —, but, if anything, Eunkwang thinks, the inevitability of it makes it all the more sad.

Eunkwang settles for an awkward nod, unable to shake the feeling that no matter what he’d say in response, it would, inevitably, just make everything worse; it’s bad enough he made a stranger talk about his divorce in front of his own daughter, who’s in her own little world, still busy colouring in the two cows standing in the middle of a field, but who could very well be listening.

“What were you in Tokyo for, if you don’t mind me asking?” the man asks, breaking the weird non-silence between them and shifting in his seat so that he’s facing Eunkwang somewhat properly.

“Just work, unfortunately,” Eunkwang says, grateful not only for the man to keep the conversation going, but to also change the topic, and hopefully leave Eunkwang’s misstep behind them. “I arrived yesterday morning, and now I’m already on the way back… ”

Eunkwang can’t decide if he’s happy or sad about his time in Tokyo passing by as quickly as it did; he’d have loved to stay longer, take a nice, long walk through the city for the first time in years — his last trip there feels like an eternity ago —, but he’s also glad to be on his way back home, to leave the blank, boring conference halls behind and go back to the kind of work he actually enjoys.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher. I was invited to speak at a conference.”

“Oh,” the man makes, a hint of surprise flickering across his face. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. You do seem like you’re good with kids.”

“Well, I…” Eunkwang falters, flustered. “Thank you. I just love what I do.”

He looks down, his face becoming warm again — or really, it never got a chance to return to normal temperature; he’s sure he’s still blushing, maybe even more so than before, but he restrains the urge to hide his face in his hands.

“I’m Minhyuk, by the way,” the man says, and Eunkwang’s heart skips a beat. “Lee Minhyuk.”

It takes all of his willpower to stay calm, to at least try and pretend like this is nothing but a casual conversation to him, and like every little thing about Lee Minhyuk didn’t make Eunkwang’s heart flutter in a way he hasn’t felt for quite some time. He can’t say what it is about him, or if _it_ can be boiled down to one thing, but Minhyuk says everything with so much confidence. Quiet confidence, but confidence none the less. And Eunkwang can’t help but be hopelessly drawn to it.

“Seo Eunkwang,” he says back, slightly bowing his head. He digs his nails into the palm of his hand in an attempt to stay present, and not let his thoughts and feelings overwhelm him. Minhyuk has been more than forgiving over the course of their conversation, and Eunkwang won’t let allow himself to mess up another time.

Between them, the little girl looks up from her colouring book, suddenly curious about what’s being said.

“And this is Miyu,” Minhyuk introduces her, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“I’m Miyu!” she proudly parrots, straightening her back and puffing out her chest; Minhyuk just scoffs, visibly amused at the theatrics, and Eunkwang chuckles softly.

“Nice to meet you, Miyu,” he says, shooting her a grin that she gleefully returns, her eyes crinkling.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Minhyuk asks. “If I’m staying up for the rest of the flight I might as well…”

“Oh, sure,” Eunkwang blurts out, lifting his gaze to meet Minhyuk’s eyes again. The white around his pupils is still somewhere between red and pink, but there’s more life than there was before. “I’d love to.”

He turns to his laptop, saving what little he had managed to write up and giving himself a second to breathe. His heart rate already picking up at the thought of another hour of talking to Minhyuk, Eunkwang thinks he’s going to have to at least slow down the whirlwind of thoughts inside his head if he doesn’t want to make even more of a fool of himself than he already has.

Then again, something tells him Minhyuk doesn’t mind either way.

**Author's Note:**

> spreading not only the minkwang but also the single dad!minhyuk agenda (ര̀ᴗര́)و ̑̑ (happy birthday to our fanclub president, my actual loml <3)
> 
> this was loosely based on [prompt #5 here](https://tickatocka.tumblr.com/post/101530238776/airport-related-aus-tho-i-fell-asleep-on-your);; [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/jungsilhoon) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/9094) | [btob fic exchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/btob_fic_exchange)


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